The Cursed
by jaintn
Summary: Shotguns, drugs, and death, what more could you ask?


_Please Note: This story is based on the game of Starcraft, a product of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. It is also loosely a companion piece to Mya's story, "The Curse," which is also posted on this site. I wish to deny from neither their proper share of the credit for inspiring this story (however poor it may be)._  
  
**The Cursed**  
  
The troop crossed the square in the sweltering noonday sun. Between the wreckage of overturned, burned out vehicles, concrete debris, and the shredded remains of corporate fauna, they marched towards their goal: a road entering the opposing side of the square which would also be their ambush point  
  
Composed of twelve members, nine of the squad's soldiers were clothed in standard uniforms and carried automatic gauss rifles. The other three members of the troop were clad in black pants, carried large shotguns, and had crossed bandoliers of ammo on their otherwise bare chests. Two of the three armed with shotguns had a bright red tint to their skin, much brighter than the other soldiers despite the torrid sun.  
  
He was the pale skinned one of the shotgun wielders, and because of this, his shotgun toting companion turned to him and said, "Feeling a bit peaked?"  
  
"I think I've lost my edge," he replied.  
  
Approaching him, the first soldier produced a small, plastic syringe from a belt pouch. In a quick, flicking motion, the contents of the syringe were injected into his shoulder. Afterwards a shiver coiled through his limbs, abdomen, and terminated in his head. He grinned as the effects of the chemicals were almost immediate.  
  
"Victory, gentleman," the dour officer had said, "is what we will achieve."  
  
Assembled before the officer, illuminated by the pale light of field lamps, a mass of scruffy, feral faces attended the his words.  
  
"And, as each of you I'm sure are aware, victory has a price. Not all of you, even if we could afford complete confederate-style training, would return from the field of battle. But should we earn victory we will have freedom. Freedom from the oppressive grip of the Confederacy, from their unjust taxes, from their forced drafts of your brothers into their military. And freedom to choose our own destiny in our own sector of space.  
  
"What I'm looking for is people who are willing to pay the price, who are willing to make the sacrifice so that we can bring about a freedom for our people. For your people."  
  
In a roiling, narcotic haze, he remembered that had been his introduction to the army, some trite speech, canned much like the food. At least that was what he had thought of it while he still had the stamina for reflection.  
  
Having crossed the blasted square, the troop gathered together momentarily to prepare their waylay.  
  
"You three pathmakers," the captain of the troop said to he and the other two shotgun wielders, "take positions down in the road. Everyone else take a position up in the buildings. Remember, we just have to delay 'em, not take 'em out, if it comes to that."  
  
Once a bustling business node, the riots that ensued upon the planet's rebellion had reduced the city's urban areas to sprawls of broken masonry and scorched metal. At the first, gangs of citizenry along with the few Confederate garrison soldiers had risen to oppose the planet's declaration of independence from the Confederation. At that point, there had been little fighting, just the occasional exploding car or vandalized building. But after the Confederate senate resolved to block the secession of the planet, the conflict had steadily increased as more and more confederate soldiers arrived. Each wave escalating the fighting between the ill trained, under equipped natives and the highly organized confeds.  
  
Now, after months of small clashes, even while the bulk of the citizenry had attempted to maintain its daily existence, the town was wrecked from the city center to the outlying suburbs. Buildings bore the dings of small arms fire, vehicles were exploded, overturned, or smoldering. Small fires burned everywhere, and the fixtures of the city were strewn about the thoroughfares and plazas.  
  
Crawling through a shattered storefront window, the squad's captain wondered if the planet's freedom was worth the devastation of the war.  
  
The planet had been a mid-level industrial planet in the grand scheme of the Koprulu sector, producing mostly industrial goods. At its current level of development, the planet was neither rich nor poor, neither industrial nor agricultural. And, in the mind of the captain at least, there was no arguable reason why it should've been forced to be part of a confederacy which the majority of its citizens had opted to leave.  
  
Now fanning out to set up their ambush, the captain and eight others made their way several floors up into buildings overlooking the road, while he and the other two shotgun wielders hid behind or underneath cars in the street below, ready for whatever Confederate patrols they had been sent to intercept.  
  
He was hidden in the burned out passenger seat of a car not quite in the middle of the road. Trembling, he braced the butt of his shotgun on the floorboard in such a way that the muzzle pressed cooly against the right side of his head. His consciousness shifted away from the charred roof of the vehicle, the narcotics continuing to warping his mind.  
  
On that dark starless night in that tent in the training camp, only a few days after the initiation speech, he remembered being introduced to the drugs. At that point, he'd known that he and the others like him had been selected for close fighting because of their temperament, and earlier that day they'd practiced with bayonets, not like the regular soldiers learning about windage, sights, and scopes. He had had no choice but to look into the button eyes of those mannequins he stabbed, punched, and slobbered on.  
  
It was dark in the tent when he first entered. There were distortions and flickers in the minimal light, as forms shifted about in the darkness, and people stomped on the ground, without reason it seemed.  
  
The terse briefing he and the other trainees had gotten beforehand informed them that the drugs would enhance their combat faculties, making them stronger, faster, and more mentally decisive under fire. And here not thirty minutes later, he was funneling into the tent and waiting to have his first experience.  
  
A female attendant pulled up his sleeve, and he thought he could make out a smile in the dimness. And then swiftly, the disposable plastic syringe pierced his shoulder, and its contents were discharged into him.  
  
Almost immediately, he began to see in the dark. Soldiers were dancing about the enclosure, their arms waggling to some unheard tune. In the warmth of the thrall of the drugs he felt himself begin to move. He tried following the gesticulations of one and then another of the hundreds of undulating soldiers. After what seemed like a few moments, the silent rhythm reached a crescendo in his mind, and men threw themselves about violently. He felt his heart labor, as his limbs were now jerking about him unconsciously. He witnessed a new self rise from within, splitting the old as though it were a layer of latex. The new being, him, existed beyond the realm of time; it had no past or future. All that he had once been, his short-comings and insecurities, dissolved with his old self in the silent beat of that night. There was only the now, the bodies cavorting about him, the granules of dust in the air.  
  
Hiding in their ambush positions in the alley, the troop waited as a group of Confederates wove their way through the debris in the roadway. He and the other two shotgun wielders waited hidden in wrecked vehicles for their companions hiding above to start firing.  
  
None of the Confederates said a word as they continued down the road, maintaining a mostly concentric formation despite the rubble. Their weapons were ready, and their boots gently crunched the morass of pebbles and glass flakes in the street.  
  
The first bang from one of the assault rifles above the street echoed down like the voice of wrath and jerked everyone below to immediate attention. At once, the Confederates scattered and hid as bursts of gunfire trickled down from the windows above. Two of the confeds wounded in the initial volley floundered about on the pavement as their comrades began to return fire from covered positions.  
  
He and the other two shotgun wielders waited in their hidden places, no clear opportunity presenting itself in the confeds position. At the bark of the confed commander, several men broke cover and ran towards the wounded. Then, in an orderly fashion, the confeds began to fall back with their injured. The firing was now sporadic and coming from both sides, neither able to get a good shot at the other.  
  
As the Confederates began to make their way back, he, hidden as he was, realized that a Confed would pass nearby. The young looking soldier approaching him was at the rear of the others retreating. Stopping on the other side of the wrecked vehicle, the Confed turned to fire a burst towards one of the soldiers in the windows.  
  
Compelled by forces beyond his understanding, he swung himself from hiding to the top of the wreck which had camouflaged him, pumping the shotgun reflexively in midair, a terrible grimace the only fixed part of his now convulsing face. In that moment astride the wrecked car, he felt himself transformed, reaching some culmination training, experience, and time. In that moment, his senses ceased. He neither saw, nor felt, nor heard anything. He was left only with some perverse mental image as his only point of contact with the real world: the image he had was of himself as a black sliver poised to strike, one point his shotgun, the other his feet. Though only a sliver, he knew intuitively that he leapt from the overturned car -- a sliver aloft -- and fired into the surprised boy. He also knew that he slobbered and smiled upon landing. Crouching, he knew that he fired twice again.  
  
His thinking remaining so abstracted, he came to know through the black cocoon of his senses that again he flew through space. Though he didn't know that this time the movement was caused by the shoulder butt of a confederate. Suddenly, his sliver came to an abrupt, jolting stop through some odd properties of the ether it inhabited. He continued to see himself through his mind's eye until the first bullet, of what would be a terminal burst, pierced his chest, and then all he saw was the opaque, twilit sky. 


End file.
